Ipod 5G bricked after station docking

[ptitd]

Hello

I have a Logitech iPod dock station/alarm clock (ref. "Pure-fi elite"), I already tested it with an iPod classic 6G 80Gb, it worked fine. Unfortunately I lost this iPod after few weeks...
So I bought an iPod 5G 60Gb and installed RockBox on it, it worked fine. But when I put it on the station dock while Rockbox running, my iPod became bricked ( I mean, RAW disk, impossible to format or restore, even checkdisk and testdisk didn't work.

Anyone has already had this problem??
Can I hopefully recover my bricked ipod ?

It is really too bad, since it is not clearly explained that rockbox doesn't work with all dock stations. There should be a big warning in the user manual!

Moreover, I can assure that there is a big difference for sound quality whether you use the iPod dock or the standard audio jack line in (see some comments on "Apple Dock and Rockbox" topic).

[torne]

There is no way that connecting a dock can do that unless the ipod was physically/electrically damaged by the dock. Not all docks are compatible with Rockbox but the ones that aren't just don't work. Boot it into disk mode by holding play and select on poweron, and you should be able to restore it with iTunes and then reinstall rockbox, if the disk has indeed been corrupted by something.

As for sound quality, the other thread was not comparing the sound on the dock connector to the sound if you connect the ipod's headphone jack to line in; the headphone jack is obviously worse as it's been through volume control, headphone amplification, etc. The comparison was between different devices that attach to the dock connector and all receive exactly the same line-out signal from the ipod.

[[Saint]]

It is really too bad, since it is not clearly explained that rockbox doesn't work with all dock stations. There should be a big warning in the user manual!

Rather like the "No warranty for anything, do everything at your own risk" prompts that appear quite often in the documentation and/or before you installed Rockbox itself?

The iPod Accessories page in the wiki lists docks/etc that are known to work in whole or in part with Rockbox, as discovered by users like yourself that have tested and posted their findings.

I too find it terribly unlikely that the dock damanged your device unless either one of the two (the dock or the iPod) was electrically unsafe to begin with.



[St.]

[ptitd]

I know I did it at my own risk, no problem with that. Actually in the documentation it's said that in no way Rockbox can brick the ipod for a normal use, and that you can restore with iTunes any time.

Maybe it is just bad luck and the dock physically damaged my ipod, as you said. But it is weird coincidence.
That is why I just recommanded to have a warning for "special" use like docking.

@torne: I really tried everything, believe me  :'(

[torne]

The statement in the documentation is true. Thousands and thousands of people have used Rockbox on their iPods and nobody has *ever* gotten it into an unfixable state without damaging the hardware. All the pins in the dock have fixed functions and there's no way for software to set it up such that a non-broken accessory can do any damage.

If you can still get it to come up as a disk at all then it should be possible to fix it; you haven't described what actually happens when you try and restore it in iTunes. Occasionally iTunes will refuse to recognise an ipod if it's corrupted in particular ways; this can normally be worked around by erasing the start of the disk so that it looks entirely blank, or by following the manual restore instructions on the wiki using a Linux machine/VM. If the device manages to power on and get into the recovery disk mode, and a host PC can see it over USB, but no method of restoring it works, then the most likely hardware issue is a failed drive.